Musings About Choices

Trying to figure out what I want in the situation I find myself…. a riddle up to now. How to satisfy myself, while meeting the needs of an errant husband, a daughter complete with two darling grandchildren and a husband (with whom I live), two sons who live across the continent, and a third son, who has seemed to disappear, but surfaces every now and then just to let us know he is alive, if not well. I also have five stepchildren who I have pretty good, off and on relationships with. I think I know who I am, what I want, and am a generally positive person, but …… at 66, I find myself wondering about the choices I have made, and given my husband’s mid life crisis behaviors, about the choices I will make and what they mean.

I love my grandchildren and have made a choice recently not to follow my husband to Florida while he searches for himself. It feels to him like I have chosen them over him, and to some extent, maybe it is true. Who in their right mind would pick following a very angry, dissatisfied, and selfish husband to a different state, over the comfort and security, never mind the absolute love of these two children. When we made a choice to kind of cast our lot with my daughter and her husband when we retired, that was a serious commitment… not to mention that they bought a house based on our presence. Over the last three years my husband has become more and more isolated in his Church, his activities like golf and sports, and sitting in our living room looking pretty much like he did not want to be bothered by anyone, except occasionally by a grandchild.

It turns out that he made significant efforts to reach out to people from his past and set up something for himself and he decided to leave. While he made a half hearted attempt to say I was welcome to go, it was clear that I was not. Turns out he has reconnected with an old affair, and it also turns out that he is not wanting to stay there, and is intending to come home. I don’t know what he is doing there, because he is not coming home until he thinks he is ready, and I truly do not want to know.

What I am not sure about is whether I want to have him come home. On one hand I love him and we have been married for over 35 years and I cannot imagine that we are not going to be together…. despite a significant estrangement for the last year or so…. and on the other hand, I have flashes of the me that I kind of left behind over the years of raising kids, working etc… and am reconnecting to that person.

When I was in my twenties I was kind of a hippy chick…. lots of fun but I was the kind of hippy that went to work every day, paid the bills, and often kept the communal situation floating. It was a question of attitude about how to live with other people and what you were willing to put into it as opposed to figuring how much you could get out of it. I do not really have a materialistic bone in my body. As I look around my living area… it is peaceful, calm, and much of it that I chose, came from Ebay or thrift shops.

My husband is a devout Baptist who reads the Bible and goes to the Bible for guidance. Except not ….obviously…. I am not particularly religious… for any specific religion… I believe in God… whatever that means in a very inclusive way…. All people who believe in God or who do good in God’s name or their own names, who take care of the earth and the people and animals on it… that is my belief… it is all good and worthy and we all meet our maker individually and I cannot credit any man or group of men with knowing the unknowable, no matter how strongly they feel they have the right word. This does contradict what my husband believes about the Bible, and altho I do think the bible can be guidance for people who believe this, I find that many Christians just find what they want to … mostly about doing what they want and going for forgiveness later. The concepts of repentance seems to miss that your actions have to follow your words… and your credibility is based on how you act not what you say.

So that is my rant for today, I am not sure why I am ranting here, but as I take this particular journey it seems like a good idea to write it down.